This weekend, I was called upon to speak at a friend’s wedding. Well… no one summoned me. None rang my bell, conjured me like some dancing monkey, but still I felt obliged. If there is anything I could offer such an occasion, it’s words, non? It’s a time honoured tradition to drag our pavement lyricists and barstool serenaders out into the lime light for just such celebrations, to shower the bride and groom in saccharine attention.
Alas, I had very little honey for their ears. Nor did I have a catalogue of embarrassments to pitch on them like what their family had. Instead, I believe, I broke with tradition and fettered a sword of Damocles over their heads. I damned them with the warning that they’re fucking lucky. Because love is no sweet symphony, but a rending hurricane one gets caught in. And they are but blessed for finding themselves caught together. For most are torn asunder on their own, all alone.
Suffice to say, me and Aphrodite aren’t on speaking terms.
Truth be told, I don’t often recognize this vaunted love as the fixture which joins two people together. Now, maybe that says more about me than this our current state of romantic entanglements, but what I spot between people looks more to me like obligation, chains, joint mortgages, shackling offspring, or just plain fear of what life might be without someone else to suffer it with. Whenever my eyes spy one of those heartfelt looks between intertwined people, I often see desire or expectation or want. But ever so rarely devotion. Real, solid, non-egoistic devotion. The kind which would throw itself in front of a bus for its subject.
Because how can one expect, or supply, such a devotion in a world where we’re taught that the grass is always greener. Options abound. There’s always a replacement. It’s all about turn-over rate. Never about how long something’s kept.
I fear that love is going extinct.
Granted, perhaps my fairy-tale notions of a quantifiable love, one gradable on a curve of true-to-false, is a childish thing a man in his middle age should have grown out of long ago. I gladly accept the blame for my infantile convictions if it means that my fears are unfounded. It would be an absolute fucking relief if I’m the egocentric degenerate here, scarred and damaged from too many misfires, who simply can no longer recognize what love looks like… if it would mean that my suspicions are unfounded.
Alas, I yet stand to be proven wrong.
Either which way reality is bent, my speech at the wedding garnered plenty of appreciation. This sword of Damocles, this curse of mine, must’ve been sharpened upon some whetstone of truth, which resonated with couple and guests alike. And I truly hope this doom of mine serves them well, in some small way, as a reminder of how lucky they are to have caught one another.
And, what do I know. Maybe love isn’t dying off like a Dodo. Maybe it’s just rare. Maybe Aphrodite isn’t such a heartless bint. Maybe she’s just over-worked and in need of a good, long, vacation…
/Sebastian Lindberg 29/8-2023
WastedWords 